Work on handwriting (including some in Canada) and a cold or two thereafter have kept me off the listserv till just now, but I hope to post more this week. (Coincidentally, on my flight into Canada I did meet Paul erano and Steve Parsons flying the other way: into Washington, DC - and we had quite a talk!)
In the meantime - Eric, since you can't send your kid over from Italy, can you afford a phone call from Italy to me? I want to talk to you (phone calls permit more interactivity/flexibility than e-mail) before "prescribing" long-distance for the circumstances your son presents. If at all possible, let me know when you might call - and have your son on the line, if you can (I speak some Italian.) Though I'd consider this a consultation and (given the several factors at work here) would have to charge *something,* for you as a fellow pen-person I can provide 30 minutes free (save for the cost to you of placing your call) and then (should the call last longer) charge only what you say you can afford (payable to me via PayPal).
Please also specify which kind of handwriting you'd want him to learn:
/1/ the "lovely European cursive" they teach him in Italy,
/2/ a mid-twentieth-century USA cursive ("the charts that used to hang over the blackboard" in mid-thwnetieth-century USA schools came, 99% of the time, from the Zaner-Bloser company which has since changed its printing and cursive models - noticeably, but rather unhelpfully: I find the new Z-B only a marginal improvement, at best, over the old one),
or
/3/ what I usually teach (Italic cursive: which, in my experience, holds up better at speed & in lengthy writing - particularly for those of us with unconventional pen-holds - than the other styles. Admittedly, my judgment comes in part from seeing quite a lot of students come to me after having "defected" from typical USA cursives such as Z-B old or new).
To see and acquire models of various handwriting-styles (including old Z-B, new Z-B, an Italic model, and about 20 others including two versions of Palmer Method), visit educationalfontware.com which may have something you and your son find suitable. If you find anything useful there, do let me know what you picked!
Yours for better letters, Kate Gladstone - handwritingrepair@xxxxxxxxx - telephone 518/482-6763 Handwriting Repair and the World Handwriting Contest http://learn.to/handwrite, http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair 325 South Manning Boulevard Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA Order books through my site! (Amazon.com link gets me 5% - 15% commission) And sign the "Politician Legibility Act" Petition: http://www.iPetitions.com/petition/PoliticianLegibility ========================================================To Unsubscribe: Send email to fptalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe" in the Subject field. The email that you then receive MUST be replied to per instructions to complete the process.